Love me some local micro brews.  Luckily, here in North Carolina, you can find a plethora of watering holes across the state. Check out this map that lists all the breweries across the state:

New obsession I found over Thanksgiving while home in Pittsburgh:

Sarris Candies is my favorite chocolate EVER, and I discovered that they have these cute new 100 calorie packs of their chocolate covered pretzels. Now I usually hate 100 cal packs because there are like 5 pieces in each, but this one has about 20 or so small pretzel sticks to munch on! Even better, I found out via their website that they have them in DARK chocolate! I may have to buy these in bulk...

My brother and sister-in-law made a huge batch of pasta sauce using my Grandma Findle's original recipe (they had to Google how much a 'bushel' of tomatoes was, as those were the precise measurements my grandmother wrote down!).  They brought an entire extra suitcase with them all the way from Denver to deliver the freshly canned sauce to all members of our family at Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately I couldn't bring mine back in my carry-on luggage, but I plan to indulge when I go back home to Pittsburgh for Christmas. 

Gotta love old school family recipes.  Do you have any that are passed down from generations?

I am loving the new USDA "My Plate" that is now replacing the old-school food pyramid we all know so well.  

The new design makes it obvious just by looking at it how much of each food group should be part of your daily meals. Easy for kids, and even adults who may not have taken the time to really think about how the food pyramid breaks down into each meal. Let's be honest, who eats food off a pyramid? Ok, maybe Egyptians...but still, I'll take the plate!

Other than the fact that my birthday falls on the first day of Spring every year, the SECOND best thing about my birthday is that Rita's Italian Ice gives out free regular size ice every year on the 20th!  

I like to claim that they are celebrating my birth, but either way its pretty awesome so find a Rita's close to you today and cheers to warmer weather on the way (and the fact that I'm getting old)!

Kellogg's has launched an awesome campaign entitled "Share Your Breakfast" to help supply breakfast to 1 in 4 children who live in food-insecure households and may not have access to healthy, energy packed food to start their day off right.  

As a firm believer in a good breakfast, I wanted to help too!  Kellogg's makes it easy for you to upload a photo of your breakfast from your phone, e-mail or their website.  Don't have a camera phone? You can simply send a description of your breakfast via text!

For each submission Kellogg's will donate one breakfast to a child in need.

So go ahead and snap a pic of those snap crackle pops or coffee on the run, and make sure kids get the fuel they need to seize the day!

Here is my breakfast from this morning::

Hungry Girl featured my favorite home town chocolatier on their e-newsletter this morning! Sarris Candies, located just outside Pittsburgh, Pa., has the most divine chocolate covered pretzels and now they come in cute little 100-calorie bundles! 

 

I was home in Pittsburgh over Super Bowl Weekend and though the result of the game wasn't ideal, I was still able to take in all of my favorite unique to Pittsburgh sights, sounds and most importantly, food, while I was there!  Food highlight of the week was hitting up Primanti Brothers.  If you haven't heard of or experienced the wonder that is a Primanti Brothers sandwich it is unique in that fries and coleslaw are included not as a side but ON the sandwich.  Sounds kinda gross but don't knock it till you try it!  

All the Primanti's original shops are known for their loud atmosphere and assembly line open kitchen and we had a great view from above in the balcony seating (please note the massive stack of Italian white bread to the right of the grill!):

And the finished product - cheese steak with all the fixin's: